Every year, thousands of high school senior مجیک بت players across the country hope to continue playing football in college. Their motives are varied, but many, if not most, simply want to continue an activity that they enjoyed immensely in high school. They had great fun on a team with their friends, competing in high-profile events before friends and family, and earning recognition for it. They want that to continue, and many of them become more excited about the possibility as the college football recruiting process unfolds around them. Who can blame them?
Ultimately, often after that lengthy football recruiting process, some of them will join college teams, and a few will compete at that level until they are no longer eligible. Even fewer will also move on to play professionally in the National Football League.
But football will end for every player at some point, and all of them will be young men when that happens. If you don’t play after high school, it ends there – at about age 18. If you join a team in college, but decide it’s not for you, it ends then, when you are maybe 20. If you play in college, but don’t move on to the pros, it ends then, when you’re about 22 or 23. And even if you do make into the pros, the average NFL career lasts less than four years, when a player is only in his late 20s. Only a handful of players make it into their 30s as a pro. Hardly any do so in their 40s. And if they do, arguably they are still young men even at that point.
That’s why getting your college degree is a must. You can’t get anything more important from college, whether you’re a top recruit or a walk-on. Fortunately, college football programs often devote many resources to helping players academically. As a player, you must do all that you can to take advantage of that assistance. You’ve got to have a degree to give yourself the best opportunity for getting a good job over the remaining three or four decades of your work life after football. No high school or college player should ever forget that.
That’s not all college football players can gain from the experience. Playing football is a tremendous clinic in learning many of life’s lessons. You can learn about what motivates people and what doesn’t motivate them, and what encourages them and what doesn’t encourage them. You can learn about leadership, from players as well as coaches, and how it can be effective, encouraging commitment and achievement, or how it can be ineffective or counter-productive, discouraging commitment and achievement.
A wise college football player will take advantage of both of these opportunities – to earn a degree and to learn about human behavior – and apply them with success over the longest part of their lives that begins after the football experience ends. Those are the true benefits of college football for all players at that level.
